{#112 A man goes to a pawn shop with one single item. What is the item, why is he at the pawn shop?}

Jena chose C, the word prompt is peanuts.

This should truly be a challenge…🙄

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He was down on his luck. He was down on his knees. He was in a pawnshop two towns over.

“They’re magic beans,” he assured her.

“Man, you crazy!” She replied, flipping a long braid over her left shoulder, popping her grape gum loudly. This was followed by the drumbeat of her outrageously painted nails on the scuffed glass countertop. Girl sure could make a lot of noise.

“I’ll give you a dollar, Jack, and that’s just because I’m kinda hungry and don’t want to eat another candy bar.”

“They’re magic beans,” he insisted.

He was here because these truly priceless magic beans, disguised as lowly legumes, had broken him. They had broken him mentally, physically, and financially. He would have sold his soul to the devil as a young man to get his hands on them…but now…now they only caused him pain and remorse.

“They’ll take you anywhere you wanna go. You just gotta believe.”

“Where I come from, you put ’em in a RC cola and watch ’em fizz,” she said absently.

He shrugged, keeping his eyes steady. “You can do that too, but that would be a waste of power.”

“Old man, here’s five dollars. Get outta my store.”

Five dollars wouldn’t buy him much, but it would buy him the gas out of here. He would never have to look back. He could walk away from the beans that produced a beanstalk, after all. A beanstalk that took him to a whole other dimension. A beanstalk to his past that could have been.

His name wasn’t Jack, but he guessed it should have been. He was old, she had that part right. Five dollars was five dollars, and Lord knew he sure could use it.

She narrowed her eyes at him as he hesitated. “If they’re so powerful, why you standin’ here wastin’ my time? Go back to wherever it was they took you and make you some dough.” She giggled. “You done lost it.”

He had lost it. He had lost everything in his quest to regain his one true love. You can’t change the past. Not with magic beans. He took the five dollars and the bell above the door didn’t jingle as he went out.

The girl looked at the peanuts on the counter.

What if they really were magic? She watched enough TV to know anything was possible. She eyed the top layer of nuts. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try just one, surely? She’d thought about throwing them in the trash; obviously the scruffy old man was one step above homelessness or at least the psych ward. And what if he wasn’t crazy? What did she have to lose, besides a job working in a dead end pawn shop, constantly watching for shoplifters and keeping lecherous men at a distance?

She shut her eyes as her fingers closed around a particularly attractive peanut. Her mind shot back to when she was just a little thing, playing on the floor of the room she and her brother shared. It was one of her happiest memories. Her brother had been dead since she was ten, he died of leukemia. The doctors found it too late.

The shell cracked with a satisfying crunch and she popped the nuts in her mouth.

Before she could chew, there she was, back with Tony, swinging on the playset in the backyard of their apartment building.

She had been transported, and not only was she there presently, she was six years old, and best of all, Tony could see her. She’d gone back in time.

She could save him. But how long did she have here?